Significance: This case established that even though the flag is a symbol of national reverence, burning it for political reasons is an expression of an idea and therefore protected by the First Amendment.
Background: During the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas, Gregory Lee Johnson participated in a demonstration to protest the policies of the Reagan administration. After a march through the city streets, Johnson burned an American flag. He was convicted under a Texas law that made it a crime to destroy or mutilate a flag. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, however, reversed the decision, and the Supreme Court upheld this ruling.
Decision: This case was argued on March 21, 1989, and decided on June 21, 1989, by a vote of 5 to 4. Justice William Brennan Jr. spoke for the Court, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Byron White, Sandra Day O’Connor, and John Stevens dissenting. The Court found that there was not enough compelling interest for the government to limit Johnson’s demonstration. Burning the flag in a political context counted as expression of an idea, so it was protected by the First Amendment. Texas’s claim that such an action might lead to a riot was unreasonable—the government could not block the expression of every idea that might possibly lead to public unease. The Court also found that burning the flag did not destroy the flag’s symbolic value; rather, it reflected the freedom and openness to criticism that made the nation strong. The dissenting justices stated that the reverence many Americans felt toward the flag set it apart from common, everyday ideas or concepts and should be protected on that basis.
Excerpt from the Opinion of the Court: “The way to preserve the flag’s special role is not to punish those who feel differently about these matters. It is to persuade them that they are wrong. . . . And, precisely because it is our flag that is involved, one’s response to the flag burner may exploit [take advantage of] the uniquely persuasive power of the flag itself. We can imagine no more appropriate response to burning a flag than waving one’s own, no better way to counter a flag burner’s message than by saluting the flag that burns, no surer means of preserving the dignity even of the flag that burned by—as one witness here did—according its remains a respectful burial. We do not consecrate [make sacred] the flag by punishing its desecration [destruction], for in doing so we dilute the freedom that this cherished emblem represents.”
